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"Contribute" is a squishy word. Much too vague. You had said: Emphasis added. This boils down to "because of how you phrased the sentence, nobody believes anyone can be creative with how the rules are applied." I reject this as fundamentally wrong. Particularly when it applies to D&D-related...

I fundamentally disagree with your final assertion. Players have attempted to force them into only those extremes. They aren't actually at those extremes. They aren't even particularly close to either extreme. Presentation does not actually change whether you can be creative in your...

That problem is already way, way, way too much embedded in the nature of D&D as it is. You don't need minion rules for that. Or did you think that the Acolytes, Goblins (of numerous types), Cultists, Kobolds, or Xvarts--all of which have less than 10 hit points--were not somehow "dozens of...

Though I will note, it has emulated pulp stories in a variety of ways, as I use the term "emulation". Which is one of the reasons why I think emulation and simulation need to be separated. "Simulation" is specifically about modeling. It's about trying for an accurate representation of a...

While I take a little bit of umbrage with the presentation, the core concept--yeah. I don't trust a GM just because they sit on the other side of the GM screen. I don't trust a rule solely because it was written by somebody. I do think that when one is exposed to a system one has not yet...

No. Or at least not 4e. And the fact that you hold systems you neither know well, nor play, to a different standard than the one you hold the systems you do, is precisely the issue. Except that there is a HUGE GAP between these two things! There is a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE gap between...

Which is one of the things that makes discussions with conservative, long-entrenched D&D fans so tedious. They turn off and on rules at their leisure, without really thinking about it much. They heed rules they like and reject rules they don't with a casualness that borders on whim. And then...

"...there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." Fighting things a few levels lower simply very slightly slows the problem down. It doesn't fix it. This is an iterative probability issue. Except it doesn't, because the upper bounds just become...

Perhaps a better way to phrase what I said above: The secret to hummingbird flight is that they have a specially-adapted rotator cuff in their shoulders, allowing them to....rotate the wing in its socket. Meaning the wing is, functionally, bidirectional: it points forwards when it needs to...

Well, I guess for me, the thing you have described isn't really keeping the concept either. Being aerodynamic in both directions but...more favorably aerodynamic in the reverse direction doesn't read, to me, like "backwards wings". It reads like "bidirectional wings". At which point the thing...

If you are changing the wings to be aerodynamic in the forward direction, they aren't backwards anymore. So I'm not really sure what you're preserving here.

What does D&D do mechanically? Yes, it does precisely that, because that's precisely what it is and has always been, mechanically, from its inception. D&D's engine is a wargame engine, but with a critical component removed: it is a "campaign" where one of the armies (the PCs) must continually...

Then I have nothing further to say to you on this topic, period.

It's perfectly achievable if you stop caring about diegesis...which was the whole point. You can invent whatever mechanics are needed as you need them for purely game-balance reasons, and insert them by mechanically-consistent but non-diegetic methods. And no, I don't think all possible...

Given this is precisely what 4e did, are you asserting 4e is not D&D?

The PCs' statblocks are not absolute. They change as the players change them--in the ways they are permitted to do so. Sometimes those changes are diegetic. Often, they are not. We simply handwave away the inconsistencies by admitting that the abstraction is imperfect. As for the other point...

...I don't really take "we see this imaginary star-figure boat from the rear" as much of an argument. Clearly they thought it was sailing away from them. Like a boat might do if it were, say, sailing to a faraway land to steal a great treasure.

Because: These wings are the wrong shape. Notice how hummingbird wings are shaped. They are smooth and continuous on both edges, leading and trailing, so that they can slice through the air either way. The topaz wings are not, and would cause enormous turbulence if you tried to use them that...

And, likewise, my sailing ship analogy. I can 100% buy a ship that sails through the water on magical power with no obvious means of propelling itself. It just exerts magical force on the water, or whatever. But a ship designed so that it has a completely flat, squared-off front...and a prow...

Good luck getting that to change.